Listening to the briefing about the Miyata Farm
Local press taking pictures and video
The Miyata Farm is benefiting from a growing interest in "farm tours". People from Tokyo and other big cities are retreating to the countryside to take in the natural sights and enjoy the fresh produce from Gunma prefecture. According to our guide, the clean water available in Kawaba-mura is especially good for agricultural uses. The main cash crop at the Miyata Farm is apples, but we were here today to pick blueberries.
How to pick a ripe blueberry: make sure the fruit is not red near the stem
We then set off to the blueberry fields to pick a jar of berries to bring home. Unfortunately this summer has been unseasonably cold, and as such many of the blueberries weren't quite ripe.
The diamond in the rough--a ripe berry surrounded by the unripened
Part of the tour group picking berries
These are the berries I picked. Notice that some aren't quite ripe.
Our guide showing a second type of blueberry tree
The tour group watches intently
Unfortunately the berries at the Miyata farm were a little tart--this was both due to my lack of skill in picking ripe berries and the fact that most berries were still unripened at this point of the summer. But the berries that were ripe were sweet and flavorful, just like California blueberries.
After picking our share of berries, we headed to a nearby part of Kawaba-mura to enjoy some hand-made soba. Hand-made meaning hand-made by us.
The beginnings of soba
Unfortunately, due to the hands-on nature of making, well, hand-made soba, I didn't have a chance to take any pictures of the soba-making process. Our group had a number of missteps, but in general the process was very similar to my previous post about making soba.
An artistic shot of our final hand-made soba. Note the non-uniform width of the noodles XD
Fresh soba and vegetable tempura. Yum.
After lunch we headed over to Showa-mura (昭和村) to walk through some of the vegetable fields that make Gunma famous. If you notice a dramatic change in the quality of my pictures, this is because I had to change to a point-and-shoot camera as I didn't want my good camera to be damaged by the rain.
Map of "The Showa-mura Vegetable Kingdom"
Our guide explains about the crops as the tour group looks on. In the rain.
Rows of Konnyaku plants. Gunma is well known for growing Konnyaku
Onions. This photo really reminds me of rural Monterey County, CA
An artistic shot of lettuce saplings
Cabbages. Gunma is the #1 producer of cabbages per capita in Japan.
Young lettuce plants. Note the white covering that helps reflect the light and heat from the hot Japanese summer.
We walked around the Vegetable Kingdom for about an hour, looking at all the crops being grown, before ending up at a lettuce field where we took some souvenirs. Our guide told us we had to take at least 3 heads of lettuce each, and my group members gave me the knife to perform the slaughter.
I did the lettuce harvesting for my group. I think they regret giving me a knife.
At the end of our tour of the vegetable fields, I walked back to the Vegatable Kingdom shop, where some of the produce grown on-site is sold. I considered buying some cabbage, but I figured that 3 heads of lettuce was enough greens for the next week.
Vegetables grown on-site being sold in the produce store
And of course, no Gunma tour would be complete without gelato.
Part of the tour group eats gelato
That's all for part 1 of the Gunma Tours series. You can check out a gallery of all my photos here.
